Datsyuk had a somewhat slow start to the season. For a while there no one could score and Jimmy helped the Wings gut out some wins by doing his thing and being the man. Pavs had been incredible since then but the goalie is always so important, and Jimmy's been outstanding, so while it's a tough choice Jimmy gets my vote.

"We've been in the same spot all year long. We won 50 games for the fourth year in a row. People think we're just hum-drum and boring. No, you know what we are, we're good. You can't do what we do every single day and not be good." - Mike Babcock

I wonder how much the fact that Datsyuk's been awesome for years but Howard has just this season emerged as a star weighs on this one.

Probably some, coupled with his slow start. We've all come to expect Datsyuk to be nothing short of amazing night in and night out. Howards really starting to come out as his own, but Datsyuk has been there for awhile.

I wonder how much the fact that Datsyuk's been awesome for years but Howard has just this season emerged as a star weighs on this one.

To me it was more that Datsyuk just looked off for the first couple months of the season. Uncharacteristic turnovers that ended up in the back of the Wings net. He's been great since then, but Howard has been playing great and a steadying force as this team still runs hot or cold game to game.

I'm pretty sure Pavels slow start was due to the plane crash in Russia, I said in pre-season he didn't look himself.

"If I can be totally honest, it's not a lot of guys you get impressed by. Actually, it's no one else but him. From the bench, to see what move he makes -- you're like, 'I wish I could do that.' Sometimes you sit on the bench and just think, 'wow,' and you look over to the other bench and they sit there and shake their heads, too. He has great, great skills. I'm probably not going to play with another player who has the kind of skills he has." Mikael Samuelsson on Pavel Datsyuk

I voted Datsyuk because he's been really carrying the offence on his back lately, but if I could have I'd vote for Datsyuk and Howard as co-mvps.

Howard and Datsyuk have been brilliant. The crazy thing is if Datsyuk hadn't started the season so poorly he'd be leading the league in scoring.

Just for kicks let's break the numbers down:

Datsyuk: 48gp 14g 39a 53pts +21 55.6FO%3rd in the league in assists3rd(tied)in the league in pts (with a game in hand on the guy he's tied with)13th in the league in face-off percentage17th in the league in game winning goals

Notes: In the first 16 games this year Datsyuk only had 2 goals and 10pts. Through the last 32 games he's scored 12g and 43pts (1.34 points per game).

Ready for the mindf***? If Datsyuk maintains the pace he's been on since November 17 for the rest of the year he'll end up with 26 goals and 97 points in 81 games. Sound familiar? That's the production level he was at in 07-08 and 08-09 (albeit with 5 fewer goals then he averaged in those years). What's with Datsyuk and the number 97?

Howard: 41gp 30-10-1 0.926sv% 1.95gga 5SO 6PIM1st in Wins (Rinne is the next closest guy with 28W in 45gp)2nd in Shut-outs5th in Goals against average7th in Save percentage1st in Penalties in minutes

Assuming Howard plays the same percentage of the games remaining that he's played so far he's on pace for 50 wins.

Notes: With 1,088 shots against (10th in the league) in 2,458 mins (8th) Jimmy isn't being isolated too much by the Wings. He's really making a ton of saves this year and is incredibly clutch. If Jimmy was facing very few shots we'd expect to see a significant difference between his rank in shots against and minutes played.

What's the problem here? Well he's on pace for 68 games played (5 more than in his last two seasons). That's a fairly heavy workload in my opinion and I think we'll see him given more nights off as the playoffs approach. That will undoubtedly hurt his chances to break Brodeur's win record (not that we should really care all that much about a silly record).

Just expanding on the Brodeur record for a second, it took him 78 games played to get his 48 wins. It's silly to extrapolate too much since playing nearly an entire season of starts at an elite level is incredibly hard for a goalie to do, but if we did apply Jimmy's win percentage so far to a 78 start season he'd have 57 wins in that time. That should really put Howard's win totals in perspective here. He needs 18 more wins over the remaining 33 games (and presumably 27 starts) this season (that's a 0.67% win percentage compared to his current 0.73% percentage). Brodeur's 0.922sv% and 2.18gaa that season are below Howard's so far this season. For Howard's season so far to be compared so favourably to Brodeur's famous 48 win season is a huge complement in itself.

Edit: Note that I expect Howie to cool down a bit as this heavy workload wears on him, so I'm not trying to say he'll break Brodeur's record. I just think it's worth comparing his play so far to that season as a way of showing just how great Howard's been.

There may be a little bit of noise in the ranks for SV% and GAA because of back up and platoon type goalies getting in there. I don't know where you set the limit for games played but I guess most starting guys have 30+ so that seems like a good number. So if we move from there Jimmy is looking at 3rd in GAA and 4th in SV%.

Not that we really need to refine the statistics to determine that Jimmy is 100% pure Colombian awesome.

"We've been in the same spot all year long. We won 50 games for the fourth year in a row. People think we're just hum-drum and boring. No, you know what we are, we're good. You can't do what we do every single day and not be good." - Mike Babcock